Oh Crimson White, I go away for a month and absolutely nothing changes. There still seems to be a noticeable dearth of actual opinion on the opinions page. I’m referring, of course, to Wesley Vaughn’s piece “Don’t Ignore the Elephants in the Room.” My favorite thing about this piece is that Vaughn goes above and beyond the call of duty to do just that, avoid the elephants in the room.

He talks about “campus unity,” without ever saying what that means. When I look around, I see tons of unity. Sure, some girls wear different colored tempo shorts, but they all seem to be wearing them. All the bros seem to be sporting their croakies like always. Did I miss something?

I think what Mr. Vaughn is really saying is this: white kids hang out with white kids, black kids hang out with black kids, Asian kids hang out Asian kids, etc.

Phew, we are all still here right? The world didn’t fall in upon itself as a result of a frank statement with regard to race … did it? Like I said, I think this is what Vaughn was getting at, but I can’t really be sure because of all the deflecting and obfuscating he does. Maybe he’s talking about rich kids and poor kids and frat kids and non-frat kids.

Vaughn claims that these issues, as yet only hinted at, should be resolved. Yet, he proffers not a single suggestion. He just kind of whines about it a little bit and wraps it up with what he, no doubt, thinks is a really cute turn of phrase. It’s not.

It’s a good thing Vaughn is majoring in political science; he’s already mastered the arts of: hair, smiling, saying a bunch of words without saying anything and swirling words in a manner that yokels may find charming.

Greg Houser is a graduate student in creative writing.